I got to bring about 70 students, coaches, administrators, and supporters of the Boston Debate League to a special advance screening of The Great Debaters last night. Judging from all of the clapping, laughing, and even cheering I heard, it was a huge hit, especially with the kids. Fewer than half of them were already members of the debate team, so I’m hoping we’ll get some reruits out of this as well. This is about as cool as it is ever going to be to be on your high school debate team.
As for the movie itself, it’s very useful for my purposes, but I can’t say it was particularly good. The cast was amazing, Denzel Washington and Forest Whitaker of course, but the others were pretty good, as well. Unfortunately, almost every character was a walking stereotype, and the entire story was a predictable cliche.
That’s pretty much what I expected from the trailer, and as I said, it was well acted. Overall, then, I wasn’t really disappointed, and in fact it was a pretty good rendering of the classic ‘underdog’ picture.
The thing that was disappointing to me was that the debating was really not at all central to the story. I mean it was constantly in the picture, but there was no real conflict related to the actual debating. The conflict was all amongst the main characters and occasionally with racist white folk (and even they were never being racist about the idea of an all-black college succeeding in such a ‘white’ activity).
Basically every character was an amazing debater from her very first speech and the team as a whole never really struggled with learning or getting better at the activity. They just bounced from school to school, winning and winning, and there was never even much tension over whether they were going to win their climactic debate with Harvard University. Also, the Wiley College debaters seemed to only ever debate the side of the topic with which they personally agreed: they argued for welfare, against segregation, and for civil disobedience.
I found the most interesting parts to be the asides related to Coach Tolson’s (the Denzel Washington character) labor organizing and the tension it created within the black community. Some felt they should be radical, others didn’t want to rock the boat, some were in favor of allying with white laborers, some didn’t trust them, etc.
It’s an entertaining movie, fun enough to watch, occasionally engaging emotionally, and very well acted. The story leaves a lot to be desired, but I still it’s going to do great things for the popularity of debate, especially in urban communities such as those where I work.